The current board includes:
Brown's appointees, Rossi and Richard; Thomas Umberg, a Democratic ex-legislator from Orange County, who was appointed by Fabian Nuñez; U.S. Rep. Lynn Schenk, a Democrat appointed by former Gov. Gray Davis and reappointed by Schwarzenegger; Thomas Richards, a Republican appointed by Schwarzenegger, who is CEO of a Fresno real estate firm; Russell Burns, a labor backer of the project and business manager of Operating Engineers Local 3 union, appointed by Assembly Speaker John Pérez; Robert Balgenott, a labor backer of the project and president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO, appointed by California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg; attorney and Democrat Jim Hartnett, ex-mayor of Redwood City, also appointed by Steinberg; and Los Angeles Business Journal publisher Matt Toledo, a Republican businessman appointed by Schwarzenegger.
ILLUSTRATION BY PETER HOEY
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Aside from Democrats Rossi and Richard, the two other authority board members not entangled in labor unions or career politics are Republican businessmen Toledo and Richards.
Noted Stanford historian Richard White, author of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, a damning look at California's love affair with trains, calls the High-Speed Rail Authority board "largely a booster club without much experience in high-speed rail. When you examine the numbers, [their plan] falls apart. There is certainly a lot of money in this for contractors and land speculators."
With the $98.5 billion cost now having been made public, White says, "The parallels with Union Pacific in the 19th century make me very uncomfortable. It takes a lot for me to agree with anything the Republicans say — but opposing this project is one of them."
He believes that the governor, in embracing the project a few weeks ago despite the ballooning cost, is appeasing his political constituency and his construction-union campaign contributors by pursuing "green travel" and future construction jobs at a very high cost.
Brown has somewhat altered the inexpert nature of the board by bringing in Richard, who ran BART, and Rossi, an ex–banker/businessman who had been acting as Brown's senior adviser on job creation.
Until just a few weeks ago, when the authority's report — influenced by Rossi and Richard — was released, the board was "putting out promotional pieces and not really answering the tough questions," Lowenthal tells the Weekly. He makes it clear that he "truly believes in high-speed rail" but says he has long feared the High-Speed Rail Authority's cost estimates had no basis in reality — and represented sleight of hand by rail boosters out to persuade California voters to approve the high-speed rail bond measure, Proposition 1A, in 2008.
"They were just hell-bent on moving forward and building something," Lowenthal says. "I now have to give them credit that they at least have changed somewhat. They've made a major step forward with this new plan."
But, he warns, "I'm not saying we can pay for it."
Like Lowenthal, Gordon believes in the vision of high-speed-rail — but is highly skeptical about who will pay for it.
Gordon is concerned that the state would commit billions of borrowed dollars to the project when the fiscally wrecked state government is facing a challenge in even paying its current debt service. The rail authority wants the state Legislature to allow it to spend $3 billion from Proposition 1A while authorizing $3 billion in matching money from the feds. Those funds would be expected to finance construction of 130 to 180 miles of track in the Central Valley.
"I don't see us borrowing more — and the federal government isn't going to give us more money," Gordon predicted the other day, shortly before the U.S. Senate did indeed vote to cut off future money for bullet trains.
When the high-speed train idea surfaced 15 years ago, traveling from Southern to Northern California in the time it takes to watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles courtesy of a sleek bullet train like those zipping from London to Paris seemed a sci-fi dream. Then, in 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A, which called for spending $9 billion in state money on the train and another $950 million to upgrade existing rail. With a push from President Obama, the feds have fully committed to $3 billion.
The project was billed as a train that would reach 220 miles per hour with just one stop, in Stockton, whipping between L.A. and either San Francisco, San Jose or Oakland. But now, beyond the skyrocketing cost, the design and the slow-going route with its many stops present major problems.
There is intense community opposition to plans to slash through cities and private properties. Moreover, the rail authority's decision to insert stops in the Central Valley may harm the train's ability to achieve European-style speeds of 200 to 220 mph, or, some say, even 120 mph. If that happened, the project would be more on par with Amtrak's quick Acela trains on the East Coast, but Californians would have paid the premium costs of a bullet train.
"Ultimately, the people supported high-speed rail not because of how fast it will go but because of what it is and what it could become," Lowenthal says. "But if it can't do L.A. to San Francisco in three hours, it can't compete with air travel. The rail authority is going to have to show it can compete."
